new faculty
new
faculty
2012–2013
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
The new university faculty members we celebrate in this publication join an institution that has provided more than 175 years of service to the community in which it subsists. Originally founded in
1834 as the Medical College of Louisiana, tasked to improve the public health of the New Orleans
region, Tulane University has emerged today as a national and world leader in public service and
social engagement. Our university is also recognized as a leader in scholarship, research and artmaking. We are celebrated for being innovative, trend-setting and student-centered. Our schools and
our undergraduate college offer an impressively wide array of degrees in architecture, business, law,
liberal arts, medicine, public health and tropical medicine, science and engineering and social work.
Indeed, the university has demonstrated a profound commitment to a superior learning environment
by fostering outstanding scholarship, research, and artistic accomplishment among its faculty. Tulane professors have been awarded
the most prestigious honors in the academic world along with being elected to membership in the National Academies and in the
American Academy for Arts and Sciences. In the past 35 years alone, Tulane colleagues have received 25 Fulbright Fellowships,
11 National Science Foundation CAREER Awards, 9 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, 8 National Endowment for the
Humanities Fellowships, 4 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowships and 2 Nobel Prizes in Medicine.
Tulane now resolutely connects its values and mission to the needs of the city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana and the
Gulf Coast region. As a consequence, the profile and impact of the research, scholarship and artistic endeavors in which our faculty and students engage are being transformed. More and more Tulane faculty and staff members focus their expertise on the pursuit
of a wide array of public service efforts (citywide, regionwide, nationwide, and worldwide). At the same time, our students gain practical experience, putting their rapidly maturing skills to use. We are very proud that our students thus have a truly unique educational experience. And we know that our outstanding teaching and mentorship, and the striking diversity in the degree programs
we offer, help attract to Tulane the very best faculty and students from across our nation and from around the world. In the final
analysis, it is the faculty and staff who make Tulane the truly extraordinary place that it is. It is their excellence and skill that inspires
our students and that will always enlighten, sustain, strengthen and improve the wider communities we serve. Please join me in
welcoming our new faculty colleagues and in wishing them every success in all their endeavors.
With all best wishes,
Michael A. Bernstein
Professor of History and Economics
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
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Linell Ajello, Ph.D.
Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Communication
School of Liberal Arts
Linell Ajello received her doctorate in 2012 from The Graduate
Center at the City University of New York. She has taught
in the English Department at Queens College and in the
Communication Department at Baruch. Her research focuses
on activist groups, democracy, culture, and communication,
crossing performance studies and political science. Her article
on poverty in contemporary U.S. discourse is forthcoming in
the journal Constellations.
Ahmed Aly, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Tropical Medicine
School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine
Ahmed Aly’s studies focus on the biology and host-parasite
interactions of Plasmodium parasites in mosquito and mammalian hosts. His ultimate goal is discovering novel potent subunit
vaccine candidates and the generation of effective and safe
whole organism vaccines to help eradicate malaria. His aim is to
use his expertise in molecular genetics and Plasmodium targeting techniques in generating attenuated live parasites as vaccines
and “tailor-made” transgenic Plasmodium parasite strains as
tools to explore the functions of various Plasmodium proteins
and their essential roles in the malaria parasite life cycle. He
will mainly use the rodent malaria parasite models to run the
complete malaria parasite life cycle in his lab, which will enable
him to study all life cycle stages of Plasmodium in rodents and
in mosquitoes.
Ana Lopez, associate provost for faculty affairs, greets new Tulane
faculty members at an orientaton session at the start of the semester.
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Melissa Bailes, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, English
School of Liberal Arts
Melissa Bailes received her doctorate from the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012, after being awarded
fellowships from institutions including the American Association of University Women and the Huntington Library. Her
research and teaching interests include British literature of the
long eighteenth century (1660–1830), the history of science,
digital humanities, transatlantic studies and women’s writing.
She has published in journals such as Eighteenth-Century Life,
European Romantic Review, and Eighteenth Century: Theory and
Interpretation. Her current book project argues that women
writers of the long eighteenth century often appropriated the
natural sciences to reconfigure literary, social and national
orders and identities.
Courtney Baker, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Psychology
School of Science and Engineering
Courtney N. Baker earned her doctorate in clinical psychology
from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2010, where
she specialized in child, adolescent, and family clinical psychology and minored in quantitative methods. She completed her
postdoctoral training at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences. Her research is focused on better understanding and addressing contextual and implementation factors
on the effective translation of evidence-based socioemotional
prevention and intervention programs into low-income, early
childhood community settings. Her expertise includes dissemination and implementation research, type II translational
research, early childhood socioemotional/mental health intervention and prevention programs, school- and communitybased research, community-based participatory research and
evidence-based practice.
Julia Barnhill, Ph.D.
Instructor of Anesthesiology
School of Medicine
Julia Barnhill completed her doctoral work in communication
at the University of South Florida in 2011. She worked
in special projects for the provost at the University of
Louisiana at Monroe from 2007–2011. She currently works
in the anesthesiology department on current education
initiatives and teaches Health Communication in the
communication department. Her research interests include
health communication, family communication, ethnography
and interpersonal communication.
Otávio Bartalotti, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Economics
School of Liberal Arts
Otávio Bartalotti earned his doctorate from Michigan State
University in 2012, after receiving an economics B.S. from the
University of São Paulo and an M.S. from Fundação Getulio
Vargas, both in his home country of Brazil. His main research
and areas of expertise are econometrics and quantitative
methods. He is also interested in topics in labor economics and
public policy, especially discrimination, inequality and education in the U.S. and Latin America.
Alessandra Bazzano, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Global Community Health and
Behavioral Sciences
School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine
Alessandra Bazzano’s research focus is in maternal and child
health, with special emphasis on the behavioral and social aspects of maternal and newborn care in the community setting
and care seeking for illness. She has also worked on reproductive
health issues, especially related to women’s reproductive and
sexual health and access to care. Her interests also include
nutrition, specifically community-based nutrition and behavioral approaches to improving maternal and infant and young child
feeding. Here methodological focus is qualitative and she has
experience in low-income countries (in Southeast Asia and
Sub-Saharan Africa) and in the United States.
Ryan Boehm, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Classical Studies
School of Liberal Arts
Ryan Boehm joins the Department of Classical Studies after a
year as a visiting assistant professor at Brown University. A
native of New Orleans, he received his doctorate from the
University of California–Berkeley in 2011. He specializes in the
history and archaeology of Ancient Greece and the Near East.
His research interests focus on the social and economic history
of the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly the history of the
Greek polis, urbanization processes and contact and exchange
between east and west. He has undertaken archaeological
fieldwork in a variety of sites in Greece and Israel.
Jasmijn Bol, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Accounting
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Jasmijn C. Bol holds a M.Sc. from Maastricht University (The
Netherlands) and a Ph.D. from IESE Business School (Spain).
Before coming to Tulane University, she was an assistant pro
fessor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her
research explores employee control systems. She is especially
interested in the role of subjectivity in pay-for-performance
systems.
Melyssa Bratton, Ph.D.
Research Instructor, Pharmacology
School of Medicine
Stephen E. Braun, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor, Pharmacology
School of Medicine
Stephen E. Braun received his doctorate from the University of
Minnesota in genetics studying gene therapy technologies. He
did his postdoctoral work at Indiana University applying gene
transfer to hematopoietic stem cells and was a junior faculty at
the NEPRC in Harvard Medical School targeting HSC in nonhuman primates. Currently, he is studying gene therapy strategies
for AIDS and his areas of expertise are gene therapy, hematopoietic stem cells, lentiviral vectors and retroviral vectors.
Quincy Brown, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
School of Science and Engineering
Quincy Brown’s research focuses on translation of optical spectroscopy and imaging tools to the clinic, for improving patient
outcomes in clinical cancer care.
Michael Cunningham, associate provost, leads the Center for
Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT).
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Zhenhua Chen, Ph.D Candidate
Visiting Lecturer, Accounting
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Zhenhua Chen joins the Freeman School of Business from
Duke University where he is expected to receive his Ph.D. in
business administration in 2012. He has broad interests in
capital markets research. Currently his research focuses on
how economic and behavioral processes shape management
reporting practices.
Dean James MacLaren leads Newcomb-Tulane College, which
is the academic home for all full-time undergraduates.
Sharon Brown Hruska, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Sharon Brown-Hruska received her Ph.D. in economics from
Virginia Tech in 1994. Her research interests include derivatives
market microstructure, regulation, and risk management in
energy, commodities and securities markets. She served as
commissioner and acting chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures
Trading Commission, the federal regulator of derivatives and
commodities markets, 2002–2006. She is also vice president in
the global securities and finance practice of National Economic
Research Associates (NERA), where she provides economics
consulting and advisory services to exchanges, businesses and
governments on derivatives and securities markets and their regulation. Her areas of expertise are regulation of derivatives and
securities markets (Dodd-Frank Act), energy markets, investments, risk management, structured finance and commodities.
Kenneth Carroll, M.B.A.
Lecturer, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Kenneth Carroll received his M.B.A. from Tulane University
in 1996. He has worked in investment banking for the past
14 years as an equity research analyst. Prior to his investment
banking career he worked in the Corporate Planning Office of
Entergy Corp.
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Douglas Chrisey, Ph.D.
Professor, Physics and Engineering Physics
School of Science and Engineering
Douglas Chrisey joins the Tulane faculty this fall after serving as
professor of biomedical engineering and of material science and
engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.
Professor Chrisey started his research and teaching career
as a teaching assistant in the Department of Physics at the
University of Virginia. He finished his Ph.D. entitled “Sputtering
of Molecular Gas Solids” in 1987 and joined the U.S. Naval
Research Laboratory (NRL) as an Office of Naval Technology
postdoctoral research associate studying radiation damage in
high temperature superconductors. One year later, in 1988, he
joined NRL as a research physicist and quickly became a
supervisory research physicist of the Plasma Processing Section.
His group studied laser-based processing of materials ranging
from oxide ceramics for electronics, protective coatings, and
biomaterials, to organics, polymers and even living mammalian
cells for tissue engineering. At NRL, he was an advising
professor to students from George Washington University
(Materials Science, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Department), Georgia Tech (Material Science Department) and
North Carolina State University (Department of Biomed-ical
Engineering). In 2005, he joined North Dakota State
University’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering as
deputy director. There he managed scientists and engineers
doing research and development in wireless communications,
novel sensors, organic spintronics and combinatorial processing
of polymeric coatings. He joined RPI in 2006.
Rich Cooper, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
School of Liberal Arts
Rich Cooper received his doctorate from Louisiana State
University in 2011, where he has taught for the past eight years.
His research interests include science fiction and fantasy,
poetry and poetics, critical theory and popular culture. He has
published articles in Extrapolation and The Journal of Religion
and Film and now seeks a publisher for his book, Radical Realms.
Maurice Cox
Associate Professor and
Associate Dean for Community Management
School of Architecture
Maurice Cox, who studied architecture at Cooper Union in
New York under the guidance of John Hejduk, comes to Tulane
from the faculty of University of Virginia. A co-founder of
the national SEED (Social, Economic, Environmental, Design)
Network, Cox served as design director of the National
Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., from 2007–
2010. In that capacity, he led the Mayor’s Institute on City
Design, and the Governor’s Institute on Community Design,
and oversaw the award of more than $2 million a year in NEA
design grants across the United States.
Cristina Danciulescu, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Born in Bucharest, Romania, Cristina Danciulescu earned a
B.S. in economics from the Academy of Economic Studies,
Bucharest, Romania, a M.A. in economics from Central
Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Michigan, a M.A. and
a Ph.D. in economics with a minor in finance from Indiana
University, Bloomington, Indiana. Before joining the finance
faculty at Tulane University, she spent two years as an associate
professor of finance at Trondheim Business School in Norway.
Danciulescu’s current research interests fall broadly in the
finance area with an emphasis on risk modeling and management, empirical and theoretical asset pricing, market microstructure and financial econometrics.
Tessa Davis, LL.M.
Visiting Assistant Professor
School of Law
Tessa Davis received her LL.M. in taxation from New York
University School of Law in 2012 after completing her J.D. at
Florida State University College of Law in 2011. Prior to attending law school, she studied social anthropology at Davidson
College and continued her studies at the London School of
Economics and Political Science where she received her M.Sc.
in 2007. Her research interests include examining the ways
in which tax law and policy are influenced by cultural
context and social norms, comparative taxation and taxation in
developing nations.
Elizabeth Derryberry, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
School of Science and Engineering
Elizabeth Derryberry received her doctorate in 2007 from Duke
University and went on to postdoctoral work at the Museum of
Natural Science at Louisiana State University. Her research interests are in behavioral and evolutionary ecology. Her lab uses a
variety of methods and approaches including phylogenetic analysis, population genomics and field experiments of behavioral
interactions to address the proximate and ultimate factors controlling variation in communication signals and signaling in
birds. She also shares ideas and practices for scientific teaching
and active learning through local and national workshops and is
an active member of the Faculty Institute for Reforming
Scientific Teaching (FIRST). Her areas of expertise are behavioral and evolutionary ecology, specifically in the evolution of
bird song, urban noise impacts on bird song evolution, and bird
diversification in the Neotropics.
Erin Dwyer, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, History
School of Liberal Arts
Erin Austin Dwyer earned her Ph.D. in history of American
civilization from Harvard University in 2012, where she taught
a number of courses on gender and American history. She specializes in 19th century American history, particularly the
history of slavery and the Civil War, and her dissertation focused
on the emotional politics of American slavery. Having grown up
in Shreveport, La., Erin is thrilled to return to Louisiana, and to
teach in the history department at Tulane.
Zakaria A. Elmageed, M.D.
Research Instructor, Medicine
School of Medicine
Dr. Elmageed received his Ph.D. in physiology from Helwan
University at Cairo in 2004 where he was also previously
appointed as senior lecturer of physiology until 2006. He completed his postdoctoral training at LSU Health Sciences Center,
Johns Hopkins Medical School and Tulane University School
of Medicine. His current research focuses on investigating the
molecular mechanisms that contribute to prostate cancer development. His ultimate goal is to investigate the role of human
stem cells in the development of the prostatic disease using in
vitro and in vivo models as well as human tissues. Exploring the
role of nuclear receptors of steroidal hormones at different disease-stages and its implications in health disparity is another
topic of his interest. He is an active member in many scientific
5
associations and has been selected as a reviewer in several peerreviewed journals.
AnnieLaurie Erickson, M.F.A.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Art
School of Liberal Arts
AnnieLaurie Erickson earned her B.F.A. in photography from
the Rhode Island School of Design and her M.F.A. in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work
has been shown nationally and internationally including at the
Boston Center for the Arts, and CentrePasquArt, Bienne,
Switzerland. AnnieLaurie was on faculty at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago from 2007–2010, where she developed and
taught a special topics course on the intersections of art and science in lens-based media. Most recently, she taught at Montserrat
College of Art and ArtScience Labs in Boston. She continues to
pursue an interest in the construction and deconstruction of the
visual world through an active studio practice.
Michael Falgoust, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Philosophy
School of Liberal Arts
Michael Falgoust received his doctorate in May 2012, having defended a dssertaton on intellectual property rights. His research
interests include technology, social justice and public reason. His
areas of expertise are intellectual property law, technology and
society and religion, especially Buddhism and Asian philosophy.
Keith C. Ferdinand, M.D.
Professor of Clinical Medicine
School of Medicine
Vikki Forsyth, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
School of Liberal Arts
Vikki Forsyth received her Ph.D. in English from the University
of St. Andrews, in Scotland, in 2006. Since then, she has taught
English at universities in the Czech Republic, Canada and
the United States. Her research interests are in Renaissance
literature, particularly the work of Sir Philip Sidney and
William Shakespeare.
Cecilia T. Gambala, M.D., M.S.P.H.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology
School of Medicine
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Mark Gasiorowski, Ph.D.
Professor, Political Science
School of Liberal Arts
Mark Gasiorowski received his doctorate from the University of
North Carolina. His research focuses on Middle East politics
and U.S. policy toward the Middle East, especially regarding
Iran. He has taught at Louisiana State University since 1984. He
was a visiting professor at Tehran University in 1994, 1996 and
1998 and a visiting fellow at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s
College, Oxford University in 2001–2002. He will join the
Tulane facuity in January 2013. His areas of expertise are the
Middle East, politics and U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
Vlad Ghinea, M.F.A.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
School of Liberal Arts
Vlad Ghinea received his M.F.A. in 2012 from Tulane University. His specific areas of expertise are technical directing
and lighting design. Prior to coming to Tulane, he earned a
bachelor’s degree in computer science for business management
as well as a master’s degree in business information systems from
the University of Bucharest, Romania, his native country.
Bruce Gibb, Ph.D.
Professor, Chemistry
School of Science and Engineering
Bruce Gibbs’ research interests lie in aqueous supramolecular
chemistry including studying the properties of aqueous-based,
supramolecular nano-capsules to identify new and unusual physicochemical phenomena arising through compartmentalization,
and understanding how water and co-solutes influence supramolecular events such as host-guest binding or self-assembly.
Richard Godden, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
School of Liberal Arts
Carol Guidry, M.D.
Instructor of Clinical Dermatology
School of Medicine
Milton Hamblin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Pharmacology
School of Medicine
Milton H. Hamblin received his Ph.D. from Meharry Medical
College. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship training at
the University of Michigan. His research focuses on vascular
At a reception for Promotion and Tenure Committees, faculty members meet two associate provosts from the Office of Academic Affairs.
M.A. “Tonette” Krousel-Wood, at left, is associate provost for the health sciences, and Brian Mitchell, at right, is associate provost
for graduate studies and research.
biology and vascular remodeling-related pathophysiological
diseases, including abdominal aortic aneurysms, vascular lesion
formation and atherosclerosis.
Douglas Harris, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Economics
School of Liberal Arts
Douglas N. Harris received his Ph.D. in Economics from
Michigan State University in 2000. His work focuses on the economics of education, including teacher labor markets, teacher
and school performance measurement and accountability, and
the financial and other factors affecting college access and
success. He uses a variety of methods, ranging from randomized
trials and quasi-experiments to cost-effectiveness analysis and
surveys. He will extend this work at Tulane by starting a new
research center focused on New Orleans schools. He comes to
Tulane from a tenured faculty position at the University of
Wisconsin­­­–Madison. His areas of expertise are school reform
and education.
Kris Hoang, Ph.D Candidate
Visiting Lecturer, Accounting
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Kris Hoang is a Ph.D. candidate in accounting at the University
of Alberta School of Business. She is a chartered accountant
(Ontario, Canada) and she received her B.A. and M.Acc. at the
University of Waterloo. Her research examines the judgment and
decision making behavior of managers, directors and auditors in
corporate governance settings. She studies how auditor-client
relationships impact financial reporting. Prior to beginning her
academic career, she provided auditing services and developed
corporate governance resources for clients at Deloitte in Toronto.
Quoc Hoang, Master of Accounting
Lecturer, Accounting
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Quoc Hoang received a master of accounting from the
University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) in 2003. He joins
the Freeman School after spending more than 10 years working
as a business adviser within a global professional services firm.
In his most recent role, Quoc assembled and mentored a team
of six consultants who provided strategy and operations solutions to help clients articulate what they wanted out of their
organizations/departments and envision how they can achieve
their goals. Throughout his career, Quoc has proven his ability
to scope and execute transformational projects in a multistakeholder environment, particularly in the public sector.
Quoc will be working closely with the dean’s office on a series
of projects in support of the Freeman School’s strategic plan.
Joseph Hodes, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Jewish Studies
School of Liberal Arts
Heidi Hoechst, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, English
School of Liberal Arts
Heidi Hoechst received her Ph.D. in literature and American
cultural studies from the University of California, San Diego
in 2008. She was previously a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in
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feminist, gender and sexuality studies and English at Cornell
University and a visiting professor in feminist studies and law
and society at the University of California–Santa Barbara. Her
research explores gender, race, space and power at the intersection of culture and the economy. Her current book project
theorizes the racialization of risk in speculative economic bubbles from the 19th century land/slave conjuncture to the 2008
housing crisis.
Victor Holtcamp, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
School of Liberal Arts
Victor Holtcamp earned dual degrees in theatre and history
from the University of Washington–Seattle, a master’s degree
from Brown University, and completed his Ph.D. in 2003.
For the past five years he has been teaching at the University
of South Carolina–Columbia. His areas of interest include
Shakespeare, acting pedagogy and the intersections of culture
and theatre.
Alejandra Jaramillo, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow,
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
School of Science and Engineering
Alejandra Jaramillo earned her doctorate in botany from Duke
University in 2001. Her research focuses on the diversity of
tropical plants, especially in South America. She has taught in
Brasil, the United States and Colombia. While in Colombia, she
had the chance to work with a conservation nongovernmental
organization, which gave her experience on transmitting scientific knowledge to the broad public.
Feng Jiang, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Feng (Jack) Jiang received his Ph.D. in finance from the
University of Iowa in 2012. His current research interests include CEO compensation, mergers and acquisitions, corporate
governance, network economics and mutual funds. Feng also
served as an instructor and a teaching assistant at the University
of Iowa for courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Katherine Johnson, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Sociology
School of Liberal Arts
Katherine Johnson received her Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania
State University. Her research addresses human reproduction,
gender and family issues, especially reproductive technologies,
reproductive rights and postmodern family creation. She is also
interested in bioethical issues in the context of health and reproduction and exploring possibilities for dialogue between social
science and bioethics.
Colleen Johnson, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
School of Medicine
Colleen J. Johnson received her M.D. from Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine and has spent the last eight years at the
University of California–San Francisco, completing her medicine residency, cardiology fellowship, and cardiac electrophysiology fellowship. She is a board-certified electrophysiologist. Her
research involves the application of novel imaging techniques for
the diagnosis and evaluation of congenital cardiac arrhythmias.
She is currently pursuing research in the medical management
of atrial fibrillation.
Catherine Jones, M.D.
Instructor of Clinical Medicine
School of Medicine
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Michael
Bernstein charts the diversity of Tulane’s academic enterprise and
opportunities for collaborations.
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Marjorie Kornhauser, J.D.
Professor
School of Law
After six years teaching at Arizona State University, Marjorie E.
Kornhauser returns to Tulane University where she taught from
1992–2005. She began her career at Cleveland State University
An orientation session brought together new faculty members from all Tulane University schools, colleges and campuses as the fall semester began.
and has visited at the University of Michigan Law School and
Boston College Law School. She teaches federal income tax
and tax policy generally. Her research, however, focuses on the
intersection of the United States federal income tax and society,
especially the historical, political, and social aspects. Most recently, for example, she presented a forthcoming book chapter,
“Taxing Bachelors in America: 1895–1939,” at the University of
Cambridge (UK) History of Tax Law Conference.
Alice Kracke, Ph.D., J.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
School of Liberal Arts
After serving as senior staff attorney to the late Associate Justice
Henry B. Steagall of the Alabama Supreme Court, Alice Kracke
received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from
Tufts University in 2009. Her research focuses on the ways
early African American poets constructively practiced law in
colonial and post-Revolutionary America.
Matthew Larsen, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Economics
School of Liberal Arts
Matthew Larsen’s research interests include the economics of
education, labor economics, public economics and health
economics.
Larry LeBlanc, Ph.D.
Visiting Lecturer, Management Science
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Larry LeBlanc is visiting Tulane from Vanderbilt University,
where he is professor of operations management in the Owen
Graduate School of Management. His Ph.D. is from Northwestern University in industrial engineering/management sciences. His research interests include analyzing spreadsheet risk,
teaching management science using spreadsheets, and spreadsheet supply-chain optimization models. He has 67 publications
in referred journals. He was an invited speaker at the INFORMS
workshop on Teaching Management Science. He has twice received the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence. He was a guest
editor of the special issue of the Interfaces on Spreadsheet
Applications of Management Science and Operations Research.
He has taught advanced Excel to FedEx, Johnson Controls,
Community Health Systems, Nu-kote and KOSTA. He has been
a scientific advisor to France Telecom and has received a Japanese
government award for travel to Tokyo to study manufacturing
efficiencies of Japanese factories.
Jung Lee, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Jung Hoon Lee received a B.S. in finance from the Sung Kyun
Kwan University in South Korea, a master degree in statistics
from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in finance from
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Faculty members honored recently include, top left (center), John Klingman, Koch Chair of Architecture; top right, (at left), Anne Robinson,
Boh Professor in Engineering; lower left, (second from left), Hong-Wen Deng, Schlieder Chair in Biostatistics; and lower right, (at left),
Prescott Deininger, Brown Foundation Chair in Oncology.
Indiana University in 2011. His research interests include
mutual funds and hedge funds.
Sarah Lindsey, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Pharmacology
School of Medicine
Sarah Lindsey is a New Orleans native and received a Ph.D. in
pharmacology from LSU Health Sciences Center in 2007 and
completed her postdoctoral training at the Wake Forest
Hypertension and Vascular Research Center in Winston-Salem,
N.C. She has a broad background in cardiovascular pharmacology with specific training and expertise in vascular smooth muscle
cell function and microvascular reactivity. Her research investigates the role of the novel estrogen receptor GPR30 in cardiovascular health, and she is particularly interested in the interactions
between estrogenic signaling and the renin-angiotensin system.
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Her research will help to determine the cardiovascular benefits
and risks of hormone replacement therapy. She received the
NIH Pathway to Independence Award in 2011 and joined
the Pharmacology Department in April 2012. Her areas of
expertise are estrogen, cardiovascular health, hormone replacement, blood pressure and renin-angiotensin system.
Shawn Loht, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Philosophy
School of Liberal Arts
Shawn Loht received a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 2009 from The
Catholic University of America. He has published in the areas
of phenomenology and ancient Greek philosophy. He has also
taught at Mercer University and Pennsylvania State University.
Hua Lu, M.D., M.S., Ph.D.
Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
School of Medicine
Professor Hua Lu received a medical bachelor degree (U.S. M.D.
equivalent) from Jiangxi Medical College, China, in 1983, a
master of science degree from Peking Union Medical College in
Beijing in 1986, and a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University/
UMDNJ in 1993. After completing his postdoctoral research at
Princeton University, he was appointed as a tenure-track assistant professor by Oregon Health & Science University in 1997
and promoted to a tenured associate professor in 2003. He
joined Indiana University as a full professor of biochemistry and
molecular biology and held the Daniel and Lori Efryomson
Chair as professor of oncology in 2007 before fully joining
Tulane University School of Medicine in January 2012. Professor
Lu serves as an editorial board member for four scientific journals, and an ad hoc reviewer for various funding agents and
more than 36 national and international scientific journals.
He also serves as a scientific advisory board member for the
Diamond Blackfan Anemia Foundation, Inc. in New York.
Professor Lu has expertise in the fields of protein chemistry, molecular biology, cancer mechanisms involving p53 (the most important tumor suppressor), and c-Myc (one of the important
oncoproteins), and translational cancer research. Part of his
work is useful for anti-cancer drug development. Recently his
lab has identified a novel small molecule called Inauhzin that
can suppress tumor growth by activating the p53 pathway as a
potential anti-cancer drug candidate. His research, which has
been continuely funded by NIH/NCI grants, has resulted in
publications in scientific journals such as Nature, Molecular Cell,
Cancer Cell, Nature Medicine, EMBO J, PNAS, EMBO Reports,
EMBO Molecular Medicine, MCB, JBC, Cancer Research, Cell
Death and Differentiation and Oncogene.
Nicholas J. Maness, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor,
Microbiology and Immunology
School of Medicine
Nick Maness received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of
Wisconsin–Madison studying the immunology of human and
simian immunodeficiency virus infection (HIV and SIV). He
completed three years at UW–Madison as an assistant scientist
before joining the Tulane University faculty. His interests include the immunology of infectious disease, vaccine design and
viral evolution.
Jesse McBride, M.A.
Visiting Lecturer, Music
School of Liberal Arts
Zachariah A. McIver, D.O.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
School of Medicine
Laura McKinney, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Sociology
School of Liberal Arts
Laura McKinney received her doctorate from North Carolina
State University in 2012. Her research interests include global
and local sustainability, environmental sociology, global social
change and development, rural and community development,
and quantitative methodologies.
Catherine Michna, Ph.D.
Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
School of Liberal Arts
Catherine Michna received her Ph.D. in English from Boston
College in 2011. She has published articles in American
Quarterly, Theatre Forum, and the Journal for Ethnic American
Literature and has work forthcoming in TDR/The Drama
Review. Her research and teaching areas include urban U.S. literature and culture, African American literature, performance
studies, critical geography and New Orleans culture and literature. Her current book project, “Hearing the Hurricane
Coming: Performance, Literature, and Second-Line Knowledges
in the Struggle for Democracy in New Orleans,” explores
connections between African diasporic performance in New
Orleans and the city’s literary and theatrical fields. Her areas of
expertise include Louisiana culture and literature, specifically
African American literature in New Orleans and theater in the
Gulf South and urban school reform.
Howard Mielke, Ph.D.
Research Professor, Pharmacology
School of Medicine
Ricardo Mostany, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Pharmacology
School of Medicine
Ricardo Mostany obtained his doctorate from the University
of Leon, Spain, in 2001 and completed his postdoctoral training under the supervision of Dr. Angel Pazos (University
of Cantabria, Spain) and Dr. Portera-Cailliau (University of
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California, Los Angeles). His research focuses on neuronal
structural plasticity in normal and damaged brain (e.g., stroke
and traumatic brain injury) to try to understand how the brain
repairs itself after injury in order to facilitate its recovery during
rehabilitation therapy.
Andrea Murina, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Dermatology
School of Medicine
Dr. Murina is a graduate of LSUHSC-New Orleans School
of Medicine, Class of 2008, and completed her dermatology
residency at the Tulane School of Medicine.
Amber Naresh, M.D., M.P.H.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gyncology
School of Medicine
Dr. Naresh’s interests include reproductive infectious diseases,
cervical dysplasia, vulvar disease, HIV in pregnancy, gynecologic cord of women with HIV, postoperative infections, pelvic
infections, sexually transmitted infections and infections in
pregnancy.
Jason Nesbitt, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Anthropology
School of Liberal Arts
Jason Nesbitt received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale
University in 2012. His dissertation research focused on the social, religious, and environmental contexts of early monumental
architecture on the north coast of Peru during the second millennium BC. Prior to his time at Yale, Jason worked as an
M.A. student on the archaeology of Catequil, an oracle located
in highland Peru that was of major importance to the Inca.
His broader research interests include the archaeology of complex societies, architecture, religion, the relationships between
culture and nature, and archaeological theory. His areas of
expertise include archaeology and Peru.
Tianhua (Tim) Niu, Sc.D.
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
Tianhua (Tim) Niu received his doctoral degree in biological
sciences from Harvard University in 1998, and master of science
degree in computer science from Northeastern University in
2004. He was an assistant professor at Harvard and taught graduate courses. Before joining Tulane, he conducted research on
genome-wide gene expression profiling for a Phase II Clinical
Trial and genetics of nicotine addiction at the University of
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Virginia. His research areas encompass population genetics
theory and quantitative analysis of molecular variations, computational algorithms and statistical modeling, transcriptomic
analysis, and development and application of bioinformatics
methodologies. His areas of expertise are population genetics,
computational statistics, transcriptomics and bioinformatics.
Sabrena F. Noria, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery
School of Medicine
Xuhui (Nick) Pan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Xuhui (Nick) Pan received his Ph.D. in finance from McGill
University in Montreal in 2012. His research interests include
asset pricing, commodities, credit risk, derivatives and risk management. He also served as a sessional lecturer and a teaching
assistant at McGill University for courses at the undergraduate
and graduate levels.
Antonio Panganiban, Ph.D.
Professor, Microbiology and Immunology
School of Medicine
Hee-Won Park, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
School of Medicine
Hee-Won Park received his D.V.M. from Seoul National University, South Korea and his Ph.D. from University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Texas. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University Medical Center. His research
interest has been in studying the structural aspects of important
cellular enzymes and other proteins in normal and pathological
conditions by using crystallography and biophysical techniques,
and developing lead compounds that will form the basis for an
effective treatment of the pathological conditions.
Beatriz Pereira, M.S.
Visiting Lecturer, Marketing
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Beatriz Pereira received her M.S. and B.S. from Universidade
de São Paulo in Brazil. Her research focuses on how emotions
influence consumer decision making. She is also interested on
bilingualism and health-related decision making. Currently she
is a Ph.D. candidate in business at the University of Michigan.
Juan Carlos Pizarro, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Tropical Medicine
School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
Juan Carlos Pizarro’s research focuses on the interactions between
human and parasite proteins to understand the host-parasite relationship between Plasmodium falciparum and its human host.
Stephanie Porras, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Art
School of Liberal Arts
In 2009, Stephanie Porras received her Ph.D. in the history of
art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She has taught
courses at University College London, the Courtauld Institute
and at Columbia University. Her research focuses on Northern
European art of the 15th to 17th centuries, with particular focus
on print culture, drawing praxis and the idea of antiquity in
the North. Her areas of expertise are Renaissance/Baroque art,
issues of repatriation and provenance research.
Ambika Prasad, Ph.D.
Visiting Lecturer, Marketing
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Ambika Prasad received her doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of North Texas in 2007.
She pursued her postdoctorate at the College of Business,
University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, where she also
taught for a year. Her primary research interests are in the fields
of work place diversity and the influence of information and
At the 2012 University Commencement ceremony, teaching awards were presented. Receiving Weiss Presidential Fellowships for Undergraduate Teaching, shown in the top row above, were Randy J. Sparks (history), left photo, and Janet B. Ruscher (psychology), at right.
President’s Awards for Graduate and Professional Teaching, shown in the bottom row, went to Scott Bernhard (architecture), left photo,
and Martin Davies (law), right.
13
Huaizhen Qin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
Huaizhen Qin’s research interests include statistical genetics,
computational biology, causal inference and survey sampling.
Patrick Rafail, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Sociology
School of Liberal Arts
Patrick Rafail received his doctorate from the Pennsylvania
State University in 2012. His research and teaching interests
are in social movements and collective behavior, urban crime
control and applied statistics. His areas of expertise are social
movements, policing, applied statistics, machine learning and
natural language processing.
Physics professor John Perdew was elected to the prestigious National
Academy of Sciences in 2011. He is is a leader in the development of
density functional theory.
communication technologies in organizational behavior.
Specifically she likes to study processes such as stereotyping,
stereotype threat and performance. Her research also focuses on
virtual teams and how different aspects of dispersion like subteam configuration influence team processes and performance.
Before entering academics, Ambika worked in the Indian
Revenue Service.
Robert Prilmeier, M.S.
Visiting Lecturer, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Robert Prilmeier received a diploma in business administration
from European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel, Germany,
and he expects to earn a Ph.D. in finance in 2013 from The Ohio
State University. His research interests include corporate finance,
debt contracting and financial intermediation, and his paper
“This Time Is the Same: Using Bank Performance in 1998 to
Explain Bank Performance During the Recent Financial Crisis”
has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Finance.
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J. Emmanuel Raymundo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Communication
School of Liberal Arts
J. Emmanuel Raymundo holds a joint Ph.D. in the program in
American Studies and African American Studies from Yale
University. He has held fellowships and visiting appointments
with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the
Chemical Heritage Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania
and Princeton University. He is working on a manuscript on
leprosy in the Philippines under U.S. colonial rule during the
first half of the 20th century.
Sally Richardson, J.D.
Assistant Professor
School of Law
After receiving her juris doctorate from Louisiana State
University in 2009, Sally Richardson clerked for the 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals and worked at the law firm Skadden,
Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom in Washington, D.C. Her
teaching and research interests involve the modernization of
property and community property law.
Bryan C. Rimel, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
School of Medicine
Alexander Ruch, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
School of Liberal Arts
Alexander Ruch received his doctorate in literature from
Duke University in 2009. His research and teaching focus on
20th-century English, Irish and French literature, the intersections of literature and philosophy, and engaged writing. His
current book project, “Immutable Worlds: Afterlife Fiction in
the Twentieth Century,” analyzes a turn to secularized representation of the afterlife in mid-20th-century fiction and drama as a way of registering and contesting postwar narratives of
individual agency and helplessness.
Oana Sabo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, French and Italian
School of Liberal Arts
Oana Sabo received her doctorate in comparative literature
from the University of Southern California in 2011. Before
joining the French & Italian department at Tulane, she was a
postdoctoral teaching fellow at USC. Her research focuses on
representations of migration and diaspora in contemporary
Francophone and Anglophone literatures. More broadly, she is
interested in transnational studies, postcolonial theory and
European cinema.
Cecilia Sanchez, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Medicine
School of Medicine
Cecilia Sanchez earned her degree in microbiology from the
University of Los Andes in Bogota and obtained her DEA
(MSc) in biology and health at the University of Montpellier 2
in France. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in molecular genetics
and molecular biology from the Louis Pasteur University in
Strasbourg, working in the fields of nuclear receptors and epigenetics in the laboratory of Dr. Pierre Chambon. She spent
two years in postdoctoral training at Tulane University in the
laboratory of Dr. Melanie Ehrlich, focusing on epigenetic studies in cancer. She had a second postdoctoral experience in the
laboratory of Dr. Darwin Prockop, conducting studies in epigenetics and autophagy in stem cells. She was a recipient of the
T-32 in pulmonary diseases training grant in the laboratory of
Dr. Lasky. She joined Tulane’s faculty as an assistant professor
in May 2012 and is interested in the roles of Sirtuins, autophagy and epigenetics in lung diseases. Her current work focuses
on understanding the pathogenesis and development of novel
therapeutic paradigms in lung fibrosis. Her areas of expertise
are autophagy, epigenetics and myofibroblasts biology.
Michelle Hewlett Sanchez, Ph.D.
Professor of Practice, Engineering Physics and
Assistant Director of K-12 STEM Outreach
School of Science and Engineering
Michelle Hewlett Sanchez received her Ph.D. from the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, in
December 2011. She started working in the Speech Technology
and Research Laboratory at SRI International in Menlo Park,
Calif., as a student associate in September 2008 and joined SRI
as a research engineer in August 2011. Her research interests
include machine learning as applied to paralinguistic speech
problems including emotion recognition, suicide risk and
depression detection, and acoustic event classification.
Dale Shuger, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
School of Liberal Arts
Dale Shuger received her doctorate from the Department of
Spanish and Portuguese at New York University in 2008, with
a focus on early modern Spain. She was an assistant professor at
Columbia University from 2008–2012. Her research interests
include early modern Spanish prose and theater, the Spanish
Inquisition and the Counter Reformation. Her book Don
Quixote in the Archives: Madness and Literature in Early Modern
Spain was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2012.
In 2012, art historian Elizabeth Hill Boone was elected to the
American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Mexican Academy
of History.
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Sanjay Sikka, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
School of Medicine
Padmakumar Sivadasan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Accounting
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Padmakumar Sivadasan received his Ph.D. in accountancy
from the University of Illinois, where he has been teaching for
the past two years. His research interests are in the areas of
auditing and financial reporting. At the University of Illinois,
he received the dean’s commendation for teaching excellence
and was selected to the list of teachers ranked excellent by
their students.
Geoffrey Smith, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
Geoffrey Smith received his Ph.D. from the University of
Georgia in 2006. Before coming to Tulane, he taught at Arizona
State University and the University of Illinois. His research interests are in corporate finance and investments. His research
has been published in The Financial Review, Financial Accountability & Management and Finance Research Letters.
Ricardo Cortez, math professor and director of the Center for
Computational Science, won the 2012 Blackwell-Tapia Prize for
mentoring underrepresented minority students.
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Landon Trost, M.D.
Instructor of Clinical Urology
School of Medicine
Landon Trost received his undergraduate training from
Brigham Young University and his medical training from
Tulane University School of Medicine. After completion of his
urology residency from the Mayo School of Graduate Medical
Education, he was appointed to the academic faculty at the
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He is currently continuing
his training through a fellowship in male infertility and andrology with Dr. Wayne Hellstrom at Tulane University and has
more than 20 peer-reviewed publications. His research interests
are in clinical and surgical management of male infertility and
erectile pathophysiology and pharmacology.
Dmitry Troyanovsky, M.F.A.
Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
School of Liberal Arts
Dmitry Troyanovsky received his M.F.A. in directing from the
American Repertory Theatre/Moscow Art Theatre Institute for
Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. For the past
10 years, he has been a practicing theatre artist (with national
and international directing credits) as well as a teacher at
such institutions as New York University, Bard College and
Fordham University. He focuses on theatre that addresses areas
of compelling cultural, political, social and aesthetic concerns.
His recent activities include a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, a staged reading for Pen World Voices Festival of
International Literature, and a workshop at the Shanghai
Theatre Academy in China.
Rebecca Tuuri, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor, History
School of Liberal Arts
Rebecca Tuuri received her Ph.D. in history from Rutgers
University in May 2012. Her dissertation examines the history
of the National Council of Negro Women’s Activism in the civil rights movement. The participants of this middle class, middle age, black women’s organization employed respectable,
behind-the-scenes tactics that were fundamental to the movement but less well known than those of more visible, male, and
radical organizations of the 1960s. While a graduate student,
Tuuri also taught 11 courses, including surveys in African
American, women and gender, and United States history and
expository writing at both Rutgers New Brunswick and Newark
campuses. She also won the competitive appointment of 2011–
12 Rutgers Scholar Teacher, fellowships at the Rutgers Center
for Historical Analysis and the Institute for Research on
Women, and the Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship. A New
Orleans native, she is excited for the opportunity to teach at
Tulane and rediscover this historic city. Her areas of expertise
are 20th century American white and black women’s history
and the history of gender in the civil rights movement.
Heather Urrego, D.O.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology
School of Medicine
From Chattanooga, Tenn., Heather Urrego was awarded a bachelors of science from the University of Tennessee and her medical degree from Nova Southeastern University School of
Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She completed
her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Tulane School of
Medicine in June 2011, where she was chief resident. She received her board certification in obstetrics & gynecology in
2011. Dr. Urrego’s clinical interests are general obstetrics and
gynecology.
Mikhail Valdman, Ph.D.
Visiting Associate Professor, Philosophy
School of Liberal Arts
Mikhail Valdman is associate professor of philosophy at
Virginia Commonwealth University. He was also recently a faculty fellow at Tulane’s Murphy Institute. He works mainly in
ethics and political philosophy, specifically on questions concerning autonomy, exploitation and distributive justice. He
is currently working on a book explaining why government
should spread the wealth around.
Anna VanCleave, J.D.
Instructor in Legal Writing and Forrester Fellow
School of Law
Anna VanCleave received her law degree from New York
University School of Law in 2004. She worked as a public defender at the Public Defender Service of D.C. from 2004 to
2009, and has worked as a capital defense attorney at the
Louisiana Capital Assistance Center for the last three years. In
2007–2008, she took a one-year sabbatical to work at the
Orleans Public Defenders as the office restructured following
Hurricane Katrina.
K. Brent Venable, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Computer Science
School of Science and Engineering
K. Brent Venable comes to Tulane from the Department of
Dr. Gerald Berenson’s four decades of groundbreaking research
confirming that heart disease begins in childhood have brought him
international accolades.
Mathematics at the University of Padova in Italy, where she has
been assistant professor of computer science for the past six
years. She earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the
University of Padova, where she also earned a Laurea Magna
cum Laude in mathematics. Her research is in the context of artificial intelligence and has been dedicated to the design and deployment of intelligent systems able to reason about preferences.
She has contributed to the establishment of a new research area,
computational social choice, bridging the gap between social
choice and computer science. She is involved in a lively international scientific exchange with several research centers, including NICTA, Australia, UC Irvine, USA, NASA Ames, USA,
Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and Paris Dauphine, France.
She will also hold a joint appointment as research scientist at
the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Her areas
of expertise are artificial intelligence and women in computer
science.
Christophe Vignat, Ph.D.
Professor, Mathematics
School of Science and Engineering
Christophe Vignat received his doctorate from the University of
Paris Orsay in 1994, where he has been teaching as a professor
for the past three years. From 1994 to 2009, he was an assistant
professor at Universite Paris-Est. He spent last year as an
Invited Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne,
Switzerland. His research interests and areas of expertise are
information theory and special functions.
17
Incoming freshmen aren’t the only ones who attend orientation—new faculty from all Tulane campuses also take part in an orientation
session before the fall semester gets under way.
Teresa Villa-Ignacio, Ph.D.
Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, French and Italian
School of Liberal Arts
Teresa Villa-Ignacio received her doctorate in comparative literature from Brown University in 2010. She has taught as a lecturer in the history and literature program at Harvard
University and as a visiting assistant professor of French in the
Romance Studies Department at Boston University. Her research interests include contemporary experimental poetry
in French and English, literary theory, ethical philosophy, collective memory, translation and postcolonial studies. She is
currenlty working on a book that explores relationships of
translation and collaboration between French and American
poets from World War II to the present.
Franz Voelker, Ph.D.
Professor of Practice, French and Italian
School of Liberal Arts
Franz Voelker holds an M.A. in French and Italian literature
18
from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He received his
Ph.D. in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in
2012, where he taught both French and Italian language courses, as well as introductory courses on French culture and French
literature. His dissertation focused on the use of the genre of elegy in the works of three contemporary French poets. His research interests include French and Italian poetry, migration
and nostalgia in literature, and teaching methodology.
Shusheng Wang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Cell and Molecular Biology
School of Science and Engineering
Shusheng Wang received his Ph.D. at Tulane University.
After his postdoctoral training with Dr. Eric Olson at UT
Southwestern Medical Center, he joined the Department of
Ophthalmology and the Department of Pharmacology at
UTSW as a tenure track assistant professor. He returned to
Tulane as an assistant professor in September, 2012. He received an “Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Research” and
“PRC Distinguished Researcher Award” at UTSW, and a
“Career Development Award” from the Research to Prevent
Blindness Foundation. The research supported by NIH in his
lab is to elucidate the epigenetic mechanisms of retinal vascular development and disease, with a focus on microRNAs and
chromatin factors. His long-term goal is to develop novel and
effective therapeutics for degenerative eye diseases, including
age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR) and other vascular retinopathies.
algorithms and interdisciplinary applications including computational biology and geographic information science. She has
won research, teaching, and service awards, including an NSF
CAREER award. She has served as chair of the faculty senate,
as head of an interdisciplinary research computing facility, and
as faculty advisor for student organizations. Her areas of expertise are computer science, research computing, computing
applied to biology, geographic information science and intelligent transportation systems.
Kellie Warren, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
School of Liberal Arts
Kellie Warren received her Ph.D. in English from Tulane
University in May, 2012. Her work focuses on early twentieth
century U.S. writers.
Ed White, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English
School of Liberal Arts
Ed White received his doctorate from Cornell University in
1998, and has taught at Louisiana State University and the
University of Florida. He is the author of The Backcountry and
the City: Colonization and Conflict in Early America (2005) and
How to Read Barthes’ Image-Music-Text (2012); the co-editor of
Beyond Douglass: New Perspectives on Early African-American
Literature (2008); and the editor of a new edition of Hugh
Henry Brackenridge’s Modern Chivalry (2009). His research
and teaching focus on early U.S. literary history and slavery.
Jiang Wei, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy
School of Science and Engineering
Jiang Wei received his Ph.D from the University of Washington–
Seattle in 2010. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow
at Rice University for the past two years. His research area is
nanoscale condensed matter physics, and he is particularly
interested in the field of nanostructured materials and nanodevice physics.
Mandy Crause Weidenhaft, M.D.
Instructor of Clinical Radiology
School of Medicine
Mandy Crause Weidenhaft received her M.D. from Tulane
University School of Medicine in 2007. She completed her internship with the Ochsner Clinic Foundation Internal Medicine
Department in 2008. She completed her residency in Diagnostic
Radiology at Tulane in 2012. She is currently enrolled in a combined fellowship in musculoskeletal radiolgoy and breast imaging at Tulane University Medical Center.
Carola Wenk, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Computer Science
School of Science and Engineering
Carola Wenk received her B.S. and M.S. in mathematics and
her Ph.D. in computer science from Free University Berlin,
Germany. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University
of Arizona, and then held a faculty position at the University of
Texas at San Antonio. Her research area is in algorithms and
computational geometry, with a focus on shape matching
Anne-Marie Womack, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
School of Liberal Arts
Anne-Marie Womack completed her Ph.D. at Texas A&M
University in 2011, where she served as assistant in the Writing
Programs Office and coordinator of Instructional Technology.
Her specialties include rhetoric & composition, American
literature and gender studies.
Hongju Wu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine
School of Medicine
Hongju Wu received her Ph.D. from the Department of
Neurobiology, University of Alabama–Birmingham in 2001. She
then obtained postdocoral training in the field of gene therapy
from 2001–2003 at UAB, where she was subsequently recruited
as a faculty member (2003–2011). She joined Tulane University
in December 2011 as an associate professor. Her current research
interest is focused on the basic and translational studies related
to diabetes. Her areas of expertise are molecular biology, cell
biology, gene therapy and diabetes-related research.
19
Huanbin Xu, Ph.D.
Research Instructor, Pathology
School of Medicine
Valerie A. Yeager, Dr. P.H.
Assistant Professor, Global Health Systems and Development
School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
Valerie Yeager received her doctorate in public health from the
Department of Health Care Organization and Policy at the
University of Alabama–Birmingham in May 2012. Her research applies a health services research perspective to various
settings and issues ranging from public health departments to
physician practices and from access to care to quality improvement strategies. Much of her work is conducted at the system or
organizational level and is part of a nationally growing area of
research called public health services and systems research. In
recent studies she has examined public health partnerships and
quality improvement in local public health settings. Her other
research has focused on the use of health information technology such as electronic health records or text messaging across
various health care settings, locations and populations.
Zafer Yuksel, Ph.D.
Visiting Lecturer, Finance
A. B. Freeman School of Business
H. Zafer Yuksel received his Ph.D. in finance from the
University of Arizona. At a broad level, his research interests reside in empirical asset pricing, mutual funds, and institutional
investors. More specifically, he studies the trading behavior of
professional money managers and retail and institutional investors in mutual funds. Zafer also served as an instructor and
teaching assistant for undergraduate and graduate level courses
at the University of Arizona.
Kirche Zeile, M.F.A.
Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
School of Liberal Arts
Kirche Leigh Zeile is a costume designer whose work has been
seen in New York City and regional theatres across the country.
Her off-Broadway credits include Amazons and Their Men; The
Lady is Not For Burning; Monsterface; and The Last Word. She is
an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb, an off-Broadway
theatre company in New York. Her design work with Clubbed
Thumb has been published in the anthology, Funny, Strange,
Provocative: Seven Plays for Clubbed Thumb (Playscripts, Inc.).
Her regional design credits include the Weston Playhouse,
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Syracuse Stage, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Southern
Rep, Two River Theatre and the TriState Center for the Arts. In
addition, she has designed a number of films, including
Snapshot, 1956, and Bellclair Times. She is also a fashion historian who recently presented a paper entitled, “Change of Habit:
Evolution in Dress of the Sisters of Charity 1812–2008,” for the
Costume Society of Great Britain’s Conference in 2009.
Jinying Zhao, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Epidemiology
School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
Dr. Zhao received her M.D. in China and Ph.D. from the
University of Texas Health Science Center in 2005. Her research interests and areas of expertise are cardiovascular genetic epidemiology and statistical genetics. She is also interested
in epigenetics and bioinformatics. She has secured funding
from NIH and the American Heart Association to support her
research in these areas.
Kun Zhao, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Mathematics
School of Science and Engineering
Kun Zhao received his doctorate from the Georgia Institute of
Technology in 2009. He completed his postdoctoral research
training at the Ohio State University’s Mathematics Biosciences
Institute in 2011. Before joining Tulane University, he worked
at the University of Iowa as a visiting assistant professor from
2011 to 2012. He has taught various undergraduate mathematics courses. His research interests and areas of expertise are in
the analysis and application of nonlinear partial differential
equations inspired by important questions from applied
sciences. He has been working in areas such as biology, fluid
dynamics and continuum mechanics.
NEW FACULTY FOR 2012–2013—LISTED BY SCHOOLS
SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
Maurice Cox, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Community Management
A. B. FREEMAN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
Jasmijn Bol, Associate Professor, Accounting
Sharon Brown Hruska, Visiting Professor, Finance
Kenneth Carroll, Lecturer, Finance
Zhenhua Chen, Visiting Lecturer, Accounting
Cristina Danciulescu, Visiting Assistant Professor, Finance
Kris Hoang, Visiting Lecturer, Accounting
Quoc Hoang, Lecturer, Accounting
Feng Jiang, Visiting Assistant Professor, Finance
Larry LeBlanc, Visiting Lecturer, Management Science
Jung Lee, Visiting Assistant Professor, Finance
Xuhui (Nick) Pan, Assistant Professor, Finance
Beatriz Pereira, Visiting Lecturer, Marketing
Ambika Prasad, Visiting Lecturer, Marketing
Robert Prilmeier, Visiting Lecturer, Finance
Padmakumar Sivadasan, Assistant Professor, Accounting
Geoffrey Smith, Visiting Assistant Professor, Finance
Zafer Yuksel, Visiting Lecturer, Finance
SCHOOL OF LAW
Tessa Davis, Visiting Assistant Professor
Marjorie Kornhauser, Professor
Sally Richardson, Assistant Professor
Anna VanCleave, Instructor in Legal Writing and Forrester Fellow
SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS
Linell Ajello, Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Communication
Melissa Bailes, Assistant Professor, English
Otávio Bartalotti, Assistant Professor, Economics
Ryan Boehm, Assistant Professor, Classical Studies
Rich Cooper, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
Erin Dwyer, Visiting Assistant Professor, History
AnnieLaurie Erickson, Visiting Assistant Professor, Art
Michael Falgoust, Visiting Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Vikki Forsyth, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
Mark Gasiorowski, Professor, Political Science
Vlad Ghinea, Visiting Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
Richard Godden, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
Douglas Harris, Associate Professor, Economics
Joseph Hodes, Visiting Assistant Professor, Jewish Studies
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Heidi Hoechst, Visiting Assistant Professor, English
Victor Holtcamp, Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
Katherine Johnson, Visiting Assistant Professor, Sociology
Alice Kracke, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
Matthew Larsen, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Economics
Shawn Loht, Visiting Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Jesse McBride, Visiting Lecturer, Music
Laura McKinney, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Catherine Michna, Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
Jason Nesbitt, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Stephanie Porras, Assistant Professor, Art
Patrick Rafail, Assistant Professor, Sociology
J. Emmanuel Raymundo, Assistant Professor, Communication
Alexander Ruch, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
Oana Sabo, Assistant Professor, French and Italian
Dale Shuger, Visiting Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Dmitry Troyanovsky, Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
Rebecca Tuuri, Visiting Assistant Professor, History
Mikhail Valdman, Visiting Associate Professor, Philosophy
Teresa Villa-Ignacio, Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, French and Italian
Franz Voelker, Professor of Practice, French and Italian
Kellie Warren, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
Ed White, Associate Professor, English
Anne-Marie Womack, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, English
Kirche Zeile, Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Julia Barnhill, Instructor of Anesthesiology
Melyssa Bratton, Research Instructor, Pharmacology
Stephen E. Braun, Research Assistant Professor, Pharmacology
Zakaria A. Elmageed, Research Instructor, Medicine
Keith C. Ferdinand, Professor of Clinical Medicine
Cecilia T. Gambala, Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology
Carol Guidry, Instructor of Clinical Dermatology
Milton Hamblin, Assistant Professor, Pharmacology
Colleen Johnson, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
Catherine Jones, Instructor of Clinical Medicine
Sarah Lindsey, Assistant Professor, Pharmacology
Hua Lu, Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Nicholas J. Maness, Research Assistant Professor, Microbiology and Immunology
Zachariah A. McIver, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
Howard Mielke, Research Professor, Pharmacology
Ricardo Mostany, Assistant Professor, Pharmacology
Andrea Murina, Assistant Professor of Clinical Dermatology
Amber Naresh, Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology
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Sabrena F. Noria, Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery
Antonio Panganiban, Professor, Microbiology and Immunology
Hee-Won Park, Associate Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Bryan C. Rimel, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
Cecilia Sanchez, Assistant Professor, Medicine
Sanjay Sikka, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
Landon Trost, Instructor of Clinical Urology
Heather Urrego, Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology
Mandy Crause Weidenhaft, Instructor of Clinical Radiology
Hongju Wu, Associate Professor, Medicine
Huanbin Xu, Research Instructor, Pathology
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND TROPICAL MEDICINE
Ahmed Aly, Assistant Professor, Tropical Medicine
Alessandra Bazzano, Assistant Professor, Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences
Tianhua (Tim) Niu, Assistant Professor, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
Juan Carlos Pizarro, Assistant Professor, Tropical Medicine
Huaizhen Qin, Assistant Professor, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
Valerie A. Yeager, Assistant Professor, Global Health Systems and Development
Jinying Zhao, Associate Professor, Epidemiology
SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
Courtney Baker, Assistant Professor, Psychology
Quincy Brown, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Douglas Chrisey, Professor, Physics and Engineering Physics
Elizabeth Derryberry, Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Bruce Gibbs, Professor, Chemistry
Alejandra Jaramillo, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Michelle Hewlett Sanchez, Professor of Practice, Engineering Physics
K. Brent Venable, Associate Professor, Computer Science
Christophe Vignat, Professor, Mathematics
Shusheng Wang, Assistant Professor, Cell and Molecular Biology
Jiang Wei, Assistant Professor, Physics and Astronomy
Carola Wenk, Associate Professor, Computer Science
Kun Zhao, Assistant Professor, Mathematics
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